Tag Archives: child-free sundays

Sometimes escaping NYC means a trip through Penn Station and a 90-minute NJ Transit ride to a lazy Sunday brunch at a lovely Friend’s drool-worthy home in quaint Yardley, PA. The whole day was perfection. The food. The weather. The conpany. I loved every minute. I kinda want to move to Yardley.

When you have a few hours –10 minutes even–away from your kids it feels so indulgent. You can focus entirely on the person you’re speaking with, rather than give them half your attention or excuse yourself every three minutes to course correct your toddler. When you’re child-free you even start to enjoy activites and tasks you once loathed.

As a parent, my time is so rarely my own that I fully appreciate a few minutes to myself whenever I can get it. Doctor’s waiting room…Ikea returns department…being on hold (especially if the hold music is Cisco call manager default).

My most recent activity (a ride on NJ Transit Northeast Corridor from NY Penn to Trenton) would have normally felt like one step up from a deathmarch but instead it was 180 minutes of bliss . I shut off my brain, except for the brief period that I had to figure out the NJT app to activate my ticket (super convenient, btw) oh and the twenty minutes I read NY Times political news before swiping it off in frustration (Donald Trump makes me sick), and watched the landscape change.

I missed my sweet babe and my husband for a few hours but mama needs some alone time…even if it is on a commuter train surrounded by strangers and even stranger smells.